From the Guardian
Davis retracts suggestion UK could back out of Brexit deal on Irish border
Yesterday, in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, alarmed the Irish government by appearing to say that assurances about the Irish border given by the UK government in the UK-EU Brexit deal were not legally binding. The full transcript is here news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/10121703.pdf and here is the key quote.
One of the things I’ve always said, is we want to protect the peace process and we also want to protect Ireland from the impact of Brexit for them. So we – you know – this was a statement of intent more than anything else. It was much more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing.
That final sentence - “it was much more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing” - seemed pretty clear. Crucially, Davis’s interview also coincided with some Sunday newspapers claiming that No 10 officials were privately telling Tory Brexiters that some parts of the agreement had no legal force. For example, Edward Malnick in the Sunday Telegraph (paywall)
A senior Eurosceptic with knowledge of the discussions involving Cabinet ministers, including Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, told The Telegraph that No 10 had said a commitment to “full alignment” between the UK and the EU “doesn’t mean anything in EU law”.
A separate source confirmed that a specific Cabinet minister had been told by No 10 aides that the provision was “meaningless” and was simply included to secure Ireland’s approval for the document.
That helps to explain why the Davis interview was seen as evidence that Theresa May signed off the Brexit deal with her fingers crossed behind her back.
On LBC this morning Davis staged a full retreat, camouflaged by an attack on newspapers which he claimed had misreported what he said. A
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Neil Henderson
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THE TIMES: Ireland warns May over Brexit #tomorrowspaperstoday
Asked about today’s Times splash, he said:
I’ve never seen a more convoluted piece in a newspaper.
What I actually said yesterday, in terms, was we want to protect the peace process, we want to protect Ireland from the impact of Brexit for them. And I said this was a statement of intent which was much more than just legally enforceable. In other words, of course it is legally enforceable under the withdrawal agreement. But even if that did not happen for some reason, [if] something went wrong, we would still be seeking to provide a frictionless, invisible border with Ireland. They’ve completely twisted my words, I’m afraid.
What we’re saying is, this bit of it, the bit about full alignment argument, on the issues which affect the peace process and the Belfast agreement, we would look to that anyway because one of our absolute underpinning aims is to ensure that Ireland, and particularly the Northern Ireland peace process, is not harmed. And what is most symbolic in that is the absence of a hard border, the absence of border posts, and that sort of thing. And we are quite certain we can do that by technical and other means, even if we end up without a deal with the European Union.
When Nick Ferrari, the presenter, challenged Davis by quoting his actual words from the Marr interview at him, Davis said that he had said “much more than legally enforceable”. He said there had been “a slight misquote”, although it was not clear if by that he meant that he had slightly misspoken when he was on the Andrew Marr show yesterday or if he was accusing Ferrari of misquoting him.
(Reading the Marr transcript, it is fairly clear to me that, if Davis did intend to make the point he is making this morning, then he expressed himself very poorly, because he appeared to say the opposite of what he intended.)
Davis repeated the point again on LBC. He said:
Of course it’s legally enforceable ... It’s more than legally enforceable. In the event that the withdrawal agreement does not happen, then we would still be seeking to maintain an invisible border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. That was the point. I was making the point that it was much more than just in the treaty; it’s what we want to do anyway.
Davis normally adopts a jaunty manner in interviews, but this morning his enforced jollity was very marked. And he was speaking very quickly. It sounded as if he was nervous, knowing that he had messed up a bit yesterday and had a damage-limitation exercise to perform.